Film Review: The turns are better left unsaid in David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’
In reference to “Gone Girl” director David Fincher, Gillian Flynn — the novel’s author (and now the film’s screenwriter) — has asserted that “...even as I was writing the novel, there were certain scenes I pictured him filming. I could see them through his lens.”
Anyone who’s had the dubious pleasure of reading a few thousand press kits knows that such I-love-my-collaborators remarks should be taken with a grain of salt. One of the central issues in the story is the importance of maintaining self-interested control of public perception, which might be a further tip-off not to trust Flynn’s comment.
But the story is such a perfect fit for Fincher that this claim doesn’t seem completely outrageous. The director has dealt with temporal intercutting (“The Social Network”); questionable points of view (“Fight Club”); sudden off-balance plot shifts (“Seven”); and a particular form of suspense — a constant, simmering sense of dread (“Fight Club,” “Seven,” “Zodiac”).
In short, he may be Hollywood’s current master of technical manipulation, and he brings his A game to “Gone Girl.” It’s a study in unreliable narration, shifting audience sympathy, and rigorous control of exposition.
At the center is a married couple — Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike, in a star-making role). Previously hip, affluent New Yorkers, they have relocated to Nick’s small Missouri hometown, following a series of family issues and recession-fueled financial problems. Nick teaches and also runs a less-than-bustling bar with his sister, Margo (Carrie Coon); Amy frets over the dwindling of her trust fund, originally an inadequate compensation for her parents’ exploitation of her childhood. (She is widely known as the model for their popular series of “Amazing Amy” children’s books.)
In short, things are not exactly peachy keen in their marriage. So when Amy disappears one July morning — the day after Independence Day, no less — Nick almost immediately becomes the prime “person of interest” for local police detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens). As evidence of murder and a clumsy cover-up mounts, Nick becomes a pariah.
And then, dead center within the movie’s 2 1/2 hours, things get... surprising.
If you haven’t read the book, there’s really no more that can be said about the story without massively spoiling those surprises. The mere mention that there are surprises is almost a spoiler by itself. I hate spoiling even lousy movies — after all, your meat may be my poison — and “Gone Girl” is a very good movie indeed, one of the best so far this year and handily the most interesting thriller.
There are a bundle of narrative and thematic issues to discuss, even argue over, but, well, we just can’t, not at this point. How frustrating.
Fincher’s films are generally brilliantly cast: Are there any roles in “Seven” or “The Social Network” that would have been better served with a change of actors? (No.) Affleck has taken a lot of critical guff over the years, thanks to the inevitable comparisons to his friend, Matt Damon, and to the Bennifer/tabloid period of his public persona. (It’s not surprising that he would empathize with the film’s lambasting of 21st-century media.)
In “Gone Girl,” his perceived weaknesses are virtues; they make him perfect for the part. Among the complaints has been a sense of shallowness that reveals almost nothing of his characters’ inner lives. It makes him look shifty, impatient, untrustworthy — all adjectives that describe Nick (or at least the Nick that Fincher and Flynn want us to perceive). At first, Nick seems like a sort of nice guy, kinda maybe. But, even when his voice controls the narrative — what he tells us is intercut with Amy’s version, presented in scenes from her diary — Nick comes across as a performer in need of a better director.
About 45 minutes in, the character gets a better director — celebrity attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), who specializes in what might as well be called “O.J. cases.” Bolt knows that control of public opinion is crucial at this stage, but Nick is not always so great at taking direction. Perry takes a huge step toward a non-Madea acting career here; he is dead-on perfect and delivers the film’s funniest line with delicious gusto.
The ending left me unsatisfied, again (sad to say) for reasons that can’t be discussed in detail. Speaking in conventional terms — and in this case my conventional side takes over — there is one more final twist that should happen... and doesn’t. You think it’s being set up; these characters would set it up; but, no, the credits begin to roll, leaving us with an ending that stops just short of wrapping things up. By stopping when they do, Flynn and Fincher avoid making the movie’s moral underpinnings overly neat. In terms of thematic complexity, that’s the right move. In terms of genre expectation, it irritates.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).